We breakfast at 8 and start work at 8-30, and with intervals on to 4 or 5. Kitty has been teaching my battery the Stokes gun, firing dummy shells, &c. Our Adjutant is an A.S.C. man, and James, the Divisional Trench Mortar Officer, is in command. Parcel, with topping cake, received; many thanks! All the parcels you mention in your last letter have been received all right.
We are having appallingly rainy days. Most evenings the men play inter-battery soccer matches.
The officers are going to play the men, but it is wet to-night. I am afraid that there is little of interest in this letter.
Much love to all, from your loving Son, ALEC.
We are all still together, with not much to do and plenty of time on parade to do it in. I will give you one of my men's description of their billet: "I am situated at present in country not unlike Welphine. Our billet is pretty decent, on the first floor of a large building, which bears a slight resemblance outwardly to a Workhouse. What an existence! Look up 'Dante's Inferno,' and you will get some idea of every soldier's environment." I am afraid that our mess is none too quiet at times itself, though at present they are all quietly playing cards and reading. To-day being Sunday Kitty and I had a holiday and had breakfast in bed at 9-30.
I am just recovering from rather a bad cold; we all have come in for one, and it seems to make most of us rather argumentative on all subjects relating to trench mortars, various regiments, &c., being a motley collection of regulars, New Army and Special Reserve, and Territorial officers drawn from all sorts of regiments and representing every branch of the army except the R.E. We have R.F.A., E.G.A., R.H.A., A.S.C. and Infantry. Rather a cosmopolitan crowd, and we, most of us, all hold different views on every possible subject that turns up, but we manage to agree on the whole.
Last night Brand and I took our beds outside. It is topping weather at present--very hot, but I like hot weather. Our mess-room leads out into a sort of terrace with a wild garden all round. It must have been very pretty before the war, even in its deserted state it is very nice; forget-me-nots and bits of lake and stream everywhere. I feel as fit as a fiddle and am as brown as a berry.